The Tocsin | Issue 6, 2018
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Contents The Tocsin | Issue 6, 2018. Editorial | 3 Nick Dyrenfurth on Tim Soutphommasane – Patriotism and Leadership | 4 Budget 2019 | Page 8 Nick Dyrenfurth – Budget 2019: Back to the future | 8 Geoff Gallop – Rediscovering Anthony Crosland | 9 Remy Davies – A neo-liberal Trojan Horse | 12 Gursewak Singh – Great Debate: A Universal Basic Income? |14 Book Review by Janet McCalman – Sally McManus, On Fairness | 16 Patrick Kennedy – Broken | 17 Simon Miller – Flying under the radar |18 Geoff Gallop revisits Getting to know … JCRC Committee of Management Anthony Crosland | Page 9 member Mary Easson |20 Nick Dyrenfurth – It’s time to #changethestats | 22 Paul Strangio – Massachusetts Down Under |23 In case you missed it – highlights from our recent events | 25 JCRC in the news | 26 Paul Strangio explains Victorian Labor’s ‘Danslide’ | Page 23 The Tocsin, Flagship Publication of the John Curtin Research Centre. Issue 6, 2018. Copyright © 2018 All rights reserved. Editor: Nick Dyrenfurth | [email protected] www.curtinrc.org www.facebook.com/curtinrc/ twitter.com/curtin_rc Editorial Executive Director, Dr Nick Dyrenfurth This is a defining year for Australian social democracy. With a federal election in months our nation can scarcely afford another three years of chaotic, divisive Coalition review the 2019/20 Budget and look ahead to the election government chipping away at the fair go Australian way – details are included elsewhere in this edition and at our of life. Wages growth is non-existent and inequality webpage. Stay tuned for more news on a range of other historically high. Economic insecurity is tearing at our exciting events and publications. nation’s social fabric. In 2018 we were proud to have seen a number of our policy ideas aimed at addressing But to fight the good fight we need your renewed these issues backed by the federal Labor Party – our bold support in 2019. Signing up will help us fund the research superannuation reforms and proposal for employee to prosecute reformist ideas and spread our social representation on company boards. In 2019 the battle of democratic message of hope and opportunity for all. It ideas has never been more important to the fortunes of provides exclusive access to all of our reports and The working Australians. Tocsin. Together we can stop multi-millionaire backed right-wing reactionaries outspending social democrats The John Curtin Research Centre has been in the thick in the battle of ideas. If you have not yet signed up to of the battle of ideas, including our annual John Curtin fight the battle of ideas please consider doing so: www. Lecture delivered by Professor Tim Soutphommasane. curtinrc.org/support. Tim’s thoughtful and widely reported address urged social democrats to pursue patriotic leadership in a In unity, time of resurgent populist right-wing politics – it is reproduced in this the sixth edition of The Tocsin. In February we released our latest report #changethestats: a new way of talking about unemployment. The report Dr Nick Dyrenfurth generated considerable debate and its recommendation Editor of The Tocsin of a new ‘living wage’ has been picked up by Labor leader Executive Director, John Curtin Research Centre Bill Shorten. In this edition you will also find an exploration of the big ideas of Anthony Crosland, the British social democratic giant written by former Western Australian Premier Geoff Gallop. Renowned political commentator Paul Strangio reviews the 2018 Victorian state election in his astute piece ‘Massachusetts Down Under’. We are also delighted to host our first ‘Great Debate’ over the virtues of a Universal Basic Income between two emerging young writers Gursewak Singh and Remy Davies. Plus we publish articles by Simon Miller on a fair go for airline pilots, yours truly makes the case for employee representation on banking boards and writes on Budget 2019, while we publish young writer Patrick Kennedy’s heartfelt take on tackling domestic violence. We have much more in store for 2019. On April 3 we join with other centre-left thinktanks – the Chifley Research Centre, Per Capita and McKell Institute – to 3 Patriotism and leadership Tim Soutphommasane uses his John Curtin Lecture to warn of the threat of a race election deluded to insist that national identities had been made It is truly an honour to deliver a lecture named after obsolete. But Orwell’s characterisation of the sensibility a man many would consider the greatest of our prime of patriotism still resonates. Loving your country ministers. John Curtin was a leader who embodied needn’t mean an aggressive nationalism. Even so, it’s not for Australians decency and courage – but most of all, enough, in my view, for there to be merely a patriotism patriotism. Previous ages may perhaps have been more that is defensive. It must also be forward-looking. It isn’t civil in the conduct of its politics. But it is telling that, about defending one’s country, but advancing it. Not in when Arthur Fadden in October “John Curtin was a leader a jingoistic way, but with maturity 1941 resigned as Prime Minister and generosity. after losing a vote in the House who embodied for Australians of Representatives, opening the decency and courage – Patriotism way for John Curtin to form government, he issued a public but most of all, patriotism … Ten years ago, while completing statement praising the ‘complete Yet Curtin wasn’t only a my doctoral studies in England, I patriotism’ of his opponent and finished what was my first book, successor. Many of us, of course, wartime prime minister who titled Reclaiming Patriotism. would associate Curtin’s patriotism united the nation in its most Its thesis was that Australian with wartime necessity. ‘Without progressives – by which I meant any inhibitions of any kind’, as he difficult hours, when Australia’ssocial democrats and those on the said in 1941 following the fall of national survival was at stake. centre-left – needed to reclaim Singapore, ‘I make it quite clear that patriotism and to have a nation- Australia looks to America, free He was also a prime minister building political agenda. At the of any pangs as to our traditional who laid the foundations for time I’d been writing, the memories links or kinship with the United of the Howard years were still fresh. Kingdom.’ It was a stance of postwar reconstruction Australian progressives remained national independence that enraged and for three decades of shell-shocked by the political conservatives and those with an shifts towards conservative and imperial cast of mind. Yet Curtin economic prosperity.” atavistic nationalism. The images wasn’t only a wartime prime minister who united the of the Cronulla race riot from 2005 were imprinted on nation in its most difficult hours, when Australia’s national the national psyche. People were still getting used to survival was at stake. He was also a prime minister who conspicuous public waving of the national flag and the laid the foundations for postwar reconstruction and for sporting of southern cross tattoos. The new nationalism three decades of economic prosperity. It is this two-sided was also there in the politics of asylum, and the muscular nature of patriotism and leadership that I want to reflect assertion of national sovereignty. It was a nationalism on this evening. directed as much at keeping out people of a certain kind – especially those who may be coming by boat – as it was It is natural for us to think of patriotic leadership at making those who were permitted to arrive fit a certain as a response to necessity. We may think of patriotism mould of citizenship. It was no accident that when the as defensive, something activated when the country is Howard Government introduced a new citizenship test, endangered or under threat. Patriotism, as George Orwell it initially included questions about Australian values and wrote, means a devotion to one’s country, which one Don Bradman. believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon others. But it ‘is of its nature defensive, both My view ten years ago was that it was too easy – and militarily and culturally’. This is what sets it apart from ultimately wrong – to abandon patriotism. Yes, there was nationalism, which is inseparable from the desire for a danger that mixing politics with patriotism would lead power. We can quibble with Orwell’s characterisation. It’s to belligerent nationalism. But the greater danger was to difficult to separate a love of country from nationhood. surrender the idea of the nation to extreme or reactionary The nation-state remains the fundamental unit of political elements of our society. An inclusive and critical patriotism self-determination, even in a globalised world. The rise of was the best inoculation against jingoism. Today, the nationalist populism only confirms that we are living in idea of reclaiming patriotism remains as urgent as it was an age of nationalism. Liberal cosmopolitans have been a decade ago. The fears I held back then have, to some 4 extent, materialised. The value of patriotism has indeed pride compulsory. Public officials can’t dictate what form become seized upon by those on the fringe. Neo-Nazi and patriotism must take. There are places where a sanctioned white supremacist groups readily speak in the language patriotism is commonplace. An obvious example is of patriotism. They like to describe themselves as patriots America. Think of flags mounted on front porches, school who wish to defend our national culture and way of life. children pledging their allegiance every morning, and It’s a description that can be reinforced by sections of politicians sporting a national flag pin on their lapel. the media. When far-right nationalist extremists have Yet our sensibilities are different from the American.